“AN OASIS OF FREE THOUGHT” IN PRAGUE: PROBLEMS OF PEACE AND SOCIALISM
AND THE END OF THE THAW, 1968-1969
Andrew Kapinos
A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Curriculum in Global Studies (Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies) in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Chapel Hill 2020
iii ABSTRACT
Andrew Kapinos: “An Oasis of Free Thought” in Prague:
Problems of Peace and Socialism and the End of the Thaw, 1968-1969 (Under the direction of Chad Bryant)
This thesis investigates Problems of Peace and Socialism, the journal of the international communist movement, and its coverage of the Prague Spring and its immediate aftermath. Unlike the Moscow-based journal Kommunist, the journal’s location in Prague and the relatively
open-minded attitudes of its overseers allowed for a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of the reforms. Moscow reasserted control over the journal after the August invasion, after which PPS
joined Kommunist in condemning the reforms and calling for renewed fidelity to socialist internationalism. In addition to the journal’s role as a training ground for young Soviet thinkers who later advised M. S. Gorbachev in the 1980s, PPS’s coverage of the Prague Spring provides
insight into the varying ways the Thaw unfolded across Eastern Europe before it ultimately ended with the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and suggests ways in which events in
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... vi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ... 1
CHAPTER 2: CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL FORUM ... 10
Western Analysis of PPS ... 15
Comparison with Kommunist ... 18
The Mezhdunarodniki ... 20
CHAPTER 3: REFORM AND INVASION, JANUARY-SEPTEMBER 1968 ... 27
The Reforms as seen in PPS ... 28
Kommunist Takes Notice ... 32
The Warsaw Pact Five Invade ... 35
Shake-up at the Editorial Office ... 38
CHAPTER 4: NORMALIZATION BEGINS, OCTOBER 1968-1969 ... 41
Normalization Under Dubček Begins ... 43
The Normalizers Take the Wheel ... 46
Unity, Cohesion, and Cooperation ... 50
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
ID International Department of the CPSU KPČ Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
PPS Problemy mira a sotsialisma (Problems of Peace and Socialism)
1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
On the night of August 20-21, 1968, soldiers from the Soviet Union, Poland, East
Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the “counterrevolutionary situation” now known as the Prague Spring. Though Warsaw Pact troops met no organized violent resistance, they faced a week of mass demonstrations and indignant locals inquiring where this supposed counterrevolution was. The uproar spilled into the Prague editorial office of the theoretical journal Problemy mira i sotsialisma (Problems of Peace and Socialism, or PPS), where Soviet editors worked alongside Czechoslovaks and communists from around the world. One of the Soviet editors present in 1968, Vladimir Petrovich Lukin, who later became a prominent dissident and liberal politician, summed up the dilemma in which he and his coworkers found themselves: “My friends, this is a bloody mess.”1
Problems of Peace in Socialism,also known by the title of the English-language edition
World Marxist Review, served as the monthly theoretical journal of the Soviet-led international communist movement from 1958 to 1990. From its headquarters in Prague, PPS was published in thirty-seven languages and had a circulation of over 500,000 issues as of 1981.2 Although billed as a journal devoted to collaborative discussion of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, the chief editor of PPS was always a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
1 Josef Pazderka, “Rok 1968 nás změnil: rozhovor s Vladimirem Lukinem.” in Invaze 1968: Ruský pohled, ed. Josef
Pazderka (Prague: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů/Torst, 2011), 169.
2 Wallace Spaulding, "New Head, Old Problems of Peace and Socialism," Problems of Communism 31, no. 6
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(CPSU). The International Department (ID) of the CPSU had to approve every issue before publishing. American analysts typically saw this as evidence of Soviet control over the journal, charged with disseminating Moscow’s ideological line to international communist parties. An early Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report on the first issue of PPS released in 1958 described its contents as “uninspired elaborations on the Moscow line” and a part of “the effort to suppress freedom of thought and expression within the international movement,” before nonetheless cautioning that PPS “should in no circumstances be underestimated as an
authoritative vehicle for the international line.”3 In this interpretation, the journal’s supposed
status as an international forum for discussing important communist theoretical matters was no more than a smokescreen.
At odds with this picture of stifling Soviet control, Anatolii Sergeevich Cherniaev,
foreign policy advisor to Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev and former member of the PPS editorial board, wrote in his 1995 memoir that the journal’s Prague headquarters fostered an atmosphere “favorable to freedom of thought and behavior.”4 Vladimir Lukin further indicated that while the
International Department examined every issue before publishing, the reviewers were relatively receptive to unorthodox ideas and allowed some of those ideas through. Lukin even opined that the journal ”was the only one edited in Russian and sold in the USSR that escaped censorship.”5
The Prague Spring reforms, as both an honest attempt to improve socialism by giving it a
3 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The New Journal of International Communism: “Problems of Peace and
Socialism” (Langley, 1958): 9-10, CIA Electronic Reading Room.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78-00915r000900250013-1
4 Anatolii Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’ i moe vremia (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnie otnosheniia, 1995), 234.
5 Michel Tatu, “Les élites russes et la politique étrangère, leurs origins et leur évolution,” in Recherches et
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“human face” and a challenge to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, represented a significant test of just how far PPS could go in presenting unorthodox ideas to the entire Soviet-led international communist movement.
The importance of PPS’s editorial office in Prague as an incubator for a cohort of men
who advised M. S. Gorbachev in the 1980s is well known.6 This aspect of PPS’s legacy is
certainly important; indeed, it is undoubtedly the journal’s most important legacy. But none of the historians who have identified this phenomenon explored why the journal had an atmosphere conducive to creative thought, nor has anyone studied the contents of the journal itself.
Historians have in fact typically joined Cold War-era US government analysts in dismissing the idea of PPS containing daring or reformist ideas. Marie-Pierre Rey in her study of the
mezhdunarodniki, a term referring to specialists in international relations, recognized PPS a “powerful tool” for the International Department in “maintaining the cohesion of the parties while limiting the centrifugal and destabilizing tendencies that appeared after 1956,” but maintained that “the ideas expressed therein remained largely within the party’s official line.”7
Archie Brown gave an even more unflattering description of the journal’s contents as“dreary and doctrinaire by any normal standard.”8 I argue in this thesis that while typical, hardline Soviet views on most issues, especially regarding the threat of Western imperialism, certainly abounded in PPS, unorthodox views could and did appear alongside them until 1968.
6 See Brown, Archie. The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 19, 98-112; Robert D.
English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the end of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 70-78; Rey, “The Mejdunarodniki,” 54-56; Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 180; Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 159; Rachel Applebaum, Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), 146-47.
7 Rey, “The Mejdunarodniki,” 54-56.
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I show in this thesis that prior to the invasion in August 1968, PPS treated the Prague Spring reforms as a legitimate part of the conversation around building socialism. The
sympathetic portrayal of the Czechoslovak reformers contrasted with Moscow’s alarmist view of the evolving situation, as can be seen by comparing PPS’s contents with those of Kommunist, the CPSU’s official theoretical and political organ. Following the invasion, Moscow moved quickly to bring its most prominent international publication back into line by replacing the chief editor and removing some of the journal’s more progressive Soviet editors, including Lukin. As the process of “normalization” of Czechoslovak life began, PPS then became a critical site for dictating the emerging official narrative of what had happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and for signaling the need for unity, cohesion, and fidelity to Marxism-Leninism within the international communist movement
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“fundamental notions of the Soviet polity, the worldview, and indeed the very language that had originated in the Stalin decades began to erode.”9 The revelations of previously unspeakable violence disillusioned many, but the new openness and Khrushchev’s utopian vision also inspired hope that the system could be improved. A whole generation of young Soviet
intellectuals came to identify the Thaw as the time of their political awakening; a diverse group of dissidents and would-be reformers commonly known now as the “children of the Twentieth Party Congress.”10 Several of the Soviet editors at PPS explicitly counted themselves among this group. At PPS, they found an intellectual environment modeled on the ideas of 1956 where they were actively encouraged to think creatively and to consider different points of view.
The physical location of the journal in Prague also undoubtedly shaped the journal’s approach to ideology and events in the late 1960s. Czechoslovakia belatedly began its own “Thaw” in the mid-1960s; a process culminating in the removal of its neostalinist leader Antonín Novotný in 1967 and the subsequent Prague Spring reforms. Soviet editors at PPS were
immersed in Prague’s vibrant cultural scene and many fell in love with the city and its way of life. Prague was one of a few places, perhaps the only place, where Soviet intellectuals could have such close contact with not only Czechoslovak reformers, but Western communists as well. Soviet editors present in Prague in 1968 found themselves grappling with what amounted to part of what Kathleen Smith called “a long and unresolved tug of war over the boundaries of accepted criticism within the Soviet system” set off by the revelations of 1956.11 Even those editors who
9 Denis Kozlov, The Readers of “Novyi mir”: Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2013), 6-10.
10 Ludmilla Alexeyeva and Paul Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Boston:
Little, Brown and Co., 1990), 4-6.
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had already moved on to other endeavors found their faith in the Soviet system once again severely tested when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in August 1968, along with many other Soviet citizens of their generation.12 The period of relative openness that had been so crucial to their intellectual development seemed to be over as the leadership under Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev (1964-1982) opted for stability, or, as the dissidents and would-be reformers saw it, stagnation and renewed repression.13
Their remembrance of the Thaw was, of course, heavily influenced by later events and does not fully capture the complicated nature of both the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras. As Stephen Bittner has shown, the “rosy view” of the Thaw as a golden period of “liberalization” compared to the “stagnation” of the Brezhnev years was largely constructed after the fact by Soviet intellectuals who saw themselves as “victims” of the Brezhnev leadership; a group that notably included dissidents and future reformers such as the mezhdunarodniki.14 Rather than seeing the Thaw as an entirely positive time, Miriam Dobson describes the sweeping changes to Soviet society during the Thaw as “forward-looking, ambitious, and full of hope on the one hand, but disorienting and potentially upsetting on the other.”15 The Brezhnev period was also not quite the return to Stalinism that its detractors often claimed. While the Soviet government did repress dissenting views, notably in the dissident trials of the late 1960s and 1970s, the numbers of those targeted were nowhere close to those under Stalin. Other segments of the intelligentsia,
12 Alexeyeva, The Thaw Generation, 5.
13 For different perspectives on Brezhnev’s motivations, see Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and
the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1-6; Zubok, A Failed Empire, 193-209.
14 Stephen Bittner, The Many Lives of Khrushchev's Thaw: Experience and Memory in Moscow's Arbat (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2008), 2-13.
15 Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev's Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin
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especially those with Russian nationalist views, flourished. The human rights movement saw remarkable success in the 1970s and 1980s. Travel to and from the Soviet Union, as well as opportunities for cultural exchange, actually increased.16 Perhaps because of the period’s transitional nature, pinning down the end of the Thaw has been a difficult task. Scholars have argued for dates ranging from 1963 to 1968, while others have argued the Thaw does not fit into a rigid periodization at all.17 All of these arguments are based on how the Thaw played out in the
Soviet Union, not fully taking into account its ripple effects throughout the Eastern bloc, much less the entire Soviet-led international communist movement. Even works that argue for the invasion of Czechoslovakia as the end point usually do so by emphasizing the disillusionment it caused among Soviet intellectuals.18
The case of PPS, as presented in this thesis, suggests that the Thaw unfolded across the Eastern bloc unevenly before ultimately ending with the Warsaw Pact invasion of
Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Scholars of the Prague Spring have alluded to this in
characterizing the political changes in Czechoslovakia during the mid- to late-1960s as a delayed “de-Stalinization,” suggesting that this phenomenon began in Moscow and then spread to the rest of the bloc. 19 Czechoslovakia manifested the most dramatic incarnation of the process outside the Soviet Union itself, which reached its zenith after the Brezhnev leadership had already begun
16 Bittner, The Many Lives, 10-12. See also Dina Fainberg and Artemy Kalinovsky, eds. Reconsidering Stagnation
in the Brezhnev Era: Ideology and Exchange (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016).
17 For an argument for 1963, see Katerina Clark, “Rethinking the Past and Current Thaw,” in Glasnost’ in Context:
On the Recurrence of Liberalizations in Central and East European Literatures and Cultures, ed. Marko Pavlyshyn (Oxford: Berg, 1990), 1–3; for an argument for 1968, see Nancy Condee “Cultural Codes of the Thaw,” in Nikita Khrushchev, ed. William Taubman, Sergei Khrushchev, and Abbott Gleason (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 160–63; and for an argument for a fluid periodization, Eleonory Gilburd, To See Paris and to Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture (Cambridge, UK: Belknap Press, 2018), 6-8.
18 See Alexeyeva, The Thaw Generation, 5; Zubok, A Failed Empire, 207-9.
19 Kevin McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 1945-1989: A Political and Social History (London: Palgrave,
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“retrenchment”. PPS, as a Soviet-dominated publication but somewhat isolated in Prague, went through something of a delayed retrenchment itself. This offers a unique glimpse into how different parts of the Eastern bloc underwent their own Thaws and retrenchments at different paces and the challenge this posed to Moscow. Even after 1968, many of the effects of the Thaw could not be undone and would continue to influence Soviet and Eastern European politics and society. The mezhdunarodniki are only one example of its legacy. But the invasion of
Czechoslovakia represents, in the words of Nancy Condee, a crucial moment “beyond which point it is impossible to speak about the existence of the Thaw,” at least in an active sense.20
This also suggests that events in Czechoslovakia had an even greater impact on Soviet politics and society than scholars have previously acknowledged. The existing literature tends to emphasize the undoubted influence the Soviet Union had on Eastern Europe, with many scholars referring to the relationship as “imperial,” but as Roman Szporluk argues, “one should not assume, even granted the Soviet Union’s superior power, size, and worldwide role, that the existence of a socialist Eastern Europe … has had no influence on the Soviet Union.”21 The oft-noted disillusionment that the invasion of Czechoslovakia inspired among Soviet dissidents, and among would-be reformers who continued to work within the system such as Cherniaev and M. S. Gorbachev himself, is only one part of the impact of events in Czechoslovakia.22 The real
20 Condee, “Cutural Codes of the Thaw,” 161.
21 Roman Sporluk, The Influence of East Europe and the Soviet West on the USSR (New York: Praeger, 1975), 1-3.
Zvi Gitelman, in the same volume, argued that the relationship between Eastern Europe and the USSR under Stalin was imperial in nature, but became “consensual and then, in part, cooperative” under his successors, though it was an “unstable” relationship that remained undefined at the time of writing. This arguably fits in with Smith’s argument about the processes set in motion at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956.
22 Gorbachev became lifelong friends with Zdeněk Mlynář, one of the key Prague Spring reformers, when they were
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potential for reformist ideas to spread to rest of the Eastern bloc and undermine Soviet interests, notably through PPS, forced the Brezhnev leadership to change not only its foreign policy, but its attitude to change within the Soviet Union as well.23
In the first chapter of this thesis, I describe the founding of PPS and the development of a relatively open intellectual environment at its headquarters in the late 1950s and early 1960s, relying primarily on memoirs and interviews with former Soviet editors. In the second chapter, I show how PPS and Kommunist painted two entirely different pictures of the reforms in
Czechoslovakia from January 1968 up to the immediate aftermath of the invasion in September 1968. Following the shake-up of PPS’s editorial staff, I track how the normalizers took control in
constructing the narrative of what had happened in Czechoslovakia throughout the end of 1968 and into 1969, while both journals published the same calls for unity, cohesion, and fidelity to Marxism-Leninism and socialist internationalism.
On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism, trans. George Shriver (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) 1, 5-6. 42-43.
10 CHAPTER 2
CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL FORUM
Problems of Peace and Socialism began as a sort of spiritual successor to the publications of the Communist International (Comintern), a Moscow-based international organization charged with coordinating the revolutionary efforts of communist parties worldwide from 1919 to 1943, and its successor organization, the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), which lasted from 1947 to 1956. Following the dissolution of the Cominform in 1956, and its weekly newspaper, For a Lasting Peace, for People’s Democracy, along with it, the international communist movement lacked a regular publication. According to a 1967 CIA “Investigative Aid” on the journal, several smaller communist parties proposed creating a new collaborative publication at the 1957 Meeting of International Communist Parties in Moscow to serve as a forum for exchanging views and keeping the Parties abreast of important issues in the
international communist movement. Apparently, the proposal attracted only lukewarm support at first. This reticence was possibly due to suspicions that the Soviets would dominate the journal to an unacceptable degree, and also possibly due to a belief that it was unnecessary as official institutions, such as the Warsaw Pact military alliance and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, or Comecon), which coordinated economic cooperation between member states, already served to hold the Eastern Bloc together.24 It is not clear what convinced the
24 Central Intelligence Agency, Problems of Peace and Socialism: An Investigative Aid (Langley, February 1, 1967)
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CPSU and other communist parties to agree to the creation of a new publication. The CPSU may have felt that a publication symbolizing unity of the movement and providing a potentially less obvious, and less forceful, way to set limits on theoretical discussions would be helpful in light of the recent revolts in Hungary and Poland and growing tensions with China and Yugoslavia.25 Whatever the reasons, the first issue of the PPS was released less than a year later, in September 1958.
The journal’s editorial office was located in Prague, in a building that had previously housed the Catholic Theological Faculty, probably to help deflect suspicions that Moscow had control over the journal. Prague was a logical choice for several other reasons: there had not been a revolt there in 1956, as there had been in Budapest and Warsaw; it was not a perennial hotspot for confrontation with the US, as East Berlin was; and it also helped that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) volunteered to host the journal and provided a share of the funding. The CPSU, however, provided most of the funding for the journal’s activities and indeed exerted an outsize level of control over the journal.
The International Department (ID) of the CPSU had joint oversight over PPS alongside the Liaison Department with Communist and Workers’ Parties of Socialist Countries, but it appears that the ID had more direct influence over the journal than the Liaison Department. The ID handled relations with other communist parties and exercised significant influence over Soviet foreign policy during the 1960s through its supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its role in advising the Politburo.26 Most of the Soviet editorial staff held positions in the ID,
25 Zubok, Failed Empire, 112-19.
26 For more on the ID, see Rey, “The Mejdunarodniki,” 52-54; and Mark Kramer, “The Role of the CPSU
12
and the ID approved the final editions of each issue before printing. The chief editor of PPS, at least until its final months in 1990, was always a member of the Central Committee (CC) of the CPSU. The chief editor had two executive secretaries, one of whom was always from the Soviet Union and the other from Czechoslovakia, in recognition of the location and Czechoslovak contributions to the journal. Soviets and Czechoslovaks were also heavily represented on the lower levels of the editorial staff, occupying as much as eighty percent of available positions.27
Though on the surface, the heavy Soviet presence at the journal would suggest that its claims of collaborative thinking were little more than a façade, the level of Soviet control depended on the personality and attitudes of the people in charge, as will be discussed in more detail below.
Most articles published in PPS were submitted to the journal by members of communist parties from around the world. The journal’s editors occasionally authored articles themselves, and the chief editor frequently contributed opening articles discussing the central theme of an issue or reflecting on a recent event. PPS does not appear to have had a large staff of
correspondents or staff writers, though some authors did contribute multiple articles over the years under study here. It is possible that some of these recurring writers were also members of the Editorial Board, but PPS typically identified authors with their party affiliation, not their connection to the journal. The journal occasionally attributed articles only to sets of initials, usually if the author hailed from a CP in a noncommunist country, and the 1967 CIA report indicated that some articles were published under pseudonyms, for the same reason.28
PPS also attracted some of the most prominent names of the day in communist political and cultural circles throughout its run. Its staff occasionally interviewed political leaders of
27 Spaulding, “New Head,” 57-60; Georgii Shakhnazarov provided the figure of eighty percent in his memoir:
Georgii, Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami i bez nikh (Moscow: Vagrius, 2001), 94.
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communist countries, including Alexander Dubček of Czechoslovakia and Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania in the late 1960s. They also published articles attributed to the leaders of all the
Warsaw Pact countries during the late 1960s, including Leonid Brezhnev, although many of these were likely ghostwritten. Issues dedicated to celebrating major anniversaries or major communist thinkers attracted articles from prominent communists of the day more than other topics. For example, Warsaw Pact leaders Władysław Gomułka of Poland, Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria, and János Kádár of Hungaryall contributed brief articles for the centenary of Vladimir Il’ich Lenin’s birth in 1970, along with high-ranking Soviet political figures Anastas Ivanoich Mikoyan, Mikhail Andreevich Suslov, and Kliment ‘Efremovich Voroshilov.29 On the cultural side, a feature in the October 1967 issue entitled “[The] October Revolution – Its Impact on Culture” contained articles by Russian composer Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.30
Publishing the same text in dozens of languages necessitated a lengthy editing process. None of the former editors described this process in detail, but former editor and future deputy head of the ID Karen Nersesovich Brutents gave the broad strokes of the process: authors submitted articles in their native language, articles were then translated into Russian and edited, the editor discussed the edits with the author or sometimes with the representatives of local communist parties. Once the editor and author were satisfied, the article went to the Editorial Board for review. After the Editorial Board had put together a draft issue, it sent it to the ID for approval. The final copy was translated into the various language editions and then printed at
29 Karen Brutents, Tridtsat’ let na staroi ploshchadi (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1998), 119.
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local publishing houses in the country of distribution.31 Interviews or articles authored by
members of the Editorial Board, along with articles written by CPSU members, presumably went through a less rigorous screening process.
Anatolii Cherniaev suggested in his 1995 memoir that PPS had to be approved only by the International Department and did not have to go through official Soviet censorship organs Glavlit or Glavkomizdat.32 Boris Nikolaevich Ponomarev, the head of the ID from 1955 to 1986
and a highly influential figure in Soviet foreign policy during the 1960s, appeared to be
supportive of the journal and its activities: he contributed articles and personally led delegations to PPS’s seminars and roundtables.33 Cherniaev curiously put the word “supervised” in
quotations when describing Ponamarev’s role in the journal’s activities, suggesting that Ponomarev did not interfere in the day-to-day running of the journal. Cherniaev further stated that Ponomarev “was in no hurry to help” more conservative members of the editorial board that wanted to “restore Moscow’s order.” Cherniaev worked extensively with Ponomarev throughout his later career and recalled that Ponomarev generally valued thinking and writing abilities over strict ideological orthodoxy. 34 The context of the Thaw, combined with the relatively open-minded attitudes of the men in charge of moderating the journal’s contents accounts for why the editorial staff could publish some daring articles from time to time.
PPS was published monthly, with each issue comprising 90 to 100 pages. Most issues of
PPS in this period followed a similar structure: the first three to four articles typically related to a
31 CIA, Investigative Aid, 58.
32 Tatu, “Les élites russes,” quoted in Rey, “The Mejdunarodniki,” 55; Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 233.
33 His name usually appeared in PPS as “Ponomaryov.” I have chosen to use the more widely known Anglicization
“Ponomarev” in this paper.
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theme stated on the cover, such as “Africa Today” or “In the Heartland of Imperialism.” This first section also sometimes contained important news bulletins or statements from a recent international meeting of communist parties. The rest of the issue usually consisted of different topical sections containing two to four articles each. Some sections were recurring, while others were one-offs dedicated to a specific event or topic. Recurring sections included “In the
Communist and Workers’ Parties,” “Theory and Practice of Building Socialism,” “Viewpoints on Current Events,” and “Pages from History,” among others. During the late 1960s there was also a recurring section dedicated to the War in Vietnam. New sections appeared from time to time, such as “In the Citadels of Imperialism” or a new section dedicated to keeping readers updated on events in the Soviet Union, both in 1970.
Reflecting its international audience, PPS specialized in international affairs. It frequently printed articles designed to update the world movement on an important event in the author’s home country. Authors typically presented innovations in theory and practice as examples for the whole communist movement to learn from. PPS thoroughly covered the preparation for and results of major international meetings of communist parties, and additionally sponsored smaller-scale roundtable discussions and seminars of its own, the minutes of which the journal then typically published in the next month’s issue. Issues of PPS frequently ended with some short book reviews or news items, along with a few pages of advertisements.
Western Analysis of PPS
PPS quickly caught the attention of Western analysts: a CIA report on the first issue of
16
communist movement.”35 The analyst nonetheless recognized the symbolic power the journal
could hold, warning that it “will be an important instrument in Soviet control and coordination of the international Communist movement” that “should in no circumstances be underestimated as an authoritative vehicle for the international line.”36 The much lengthier 1967 CIA “Investigative Aid” concurred with the earlier assessment, but offered far more detailed information on the founding, structure, and operation of the journal. The CIA analysts relied on reading issues of the journal and on human sources, whom the analysts did not identify.37
Although the CIA reports remained classified until the 1990s, the State Department-sponsored popular and academic journal Problems of Communism occasionally ran articles discussing PPS that were available for public consumption. A 1982 article written by Wallace Spaulding, a retired US Army Reservist and “Washington-based observer of international
Communist affairs,” expressed a similar view to that found in the CIA reports. Spaulding labeled the chief editor position “the first echelon of Soviet control.” Spaulding further cites a Japanese communist who described Pavel Auersberg, the Czechoslovak deputy editor of PPS in 1967, as “more Soviet than the Soviets.” He notes that the journal, though regularly publishing short articles describing its organizational structure, generally omitted the identities of department heads. Spaulding saw this as an indication that these departments were “purely Soviet bodies serving as key channels of CPSU control.”38
35 CIA, New Journal, 9.
36 CIA, New Journal, 2, 10.
37 For this reason, I have used details from this source only when former editors corroborated them, if I could find
the same pattern in actual issues of PPS, or when discussing how Western analysts treated PPS in their analyses.
17
I suspect that American analysts, especially those employed by the US government, were unlikely to see PPS as anything other than another channel for Soviet control over the
international communist movement. In addition to the fact that they explicitly looked for methods of Soviet control over the journal, they tended to focus on how the journal’s activities reflected rifts within the international communist movement. Both CIA reports mention opposition to creating the journal on the part of some communist parties, and the report on the first issue of PPS speculated that some communist parties would be “embarrassed” by what was “clearly” a new expression of centralized Soviet control, especially those that prided themselves on national sovereignty.39 Indeed, Yugoslavia never participated in the journal. The Chinese edition was later discontinued in late 1962 as the Sino-Soviet split deepened, along with the Albanian edition and, the next year, the Korean edition. Spaulding almost gleefully recounted instances where communists from smaller communist parties criticized the CPSU for its attempts to dominate the journal’s activities at international meetings, and both he and the CIA
“Investigative Aid” took care to point out times where smaller parties defied the CPSU by altering their editions of the journal.40 The most notable of these incidents involved the
Romanian edition censoring a number of articles critical of the Chinese CP following the Sino-Soviet split.41 Despite the evidence of friction with the communist movement, the analysts never failed to stress that the journal was still a powerful tool for maintaining cohesion within the movement. Their analyses appear rooted in the totalitarian school of thought, the dominant
39 CIA, New Journal, 10.
40 Spaulding, “New Head,” 62; CIA, Investigative Aid, 60.
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paradigm in “Sovietology” at the time, which could not have accommodated the idea that a legitimate, albeit limited, conversation around building socialism could have existed in PPS.
Comparison with Kommunist
Kommunist was the official political and theoretical organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU. It dated back to April 1924, when the journal was titled Bolshevik and published on a biweekly basis. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin headed the editorial board of both Bolshevik and
Pravda in the mid-1920s, giving him a significant advantage in the factional struggle after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924. Bukharin and his allies controlled the journal until August or September 1928, when Josef Stalin, as part of his consolidation of power, replaced them with his own allies. From then on, Bolshevik stayed true to the Stalinist line.42 In 1952, the CC renamed the journal Kommunist, and sometime before the late 1960s had shifted to releasing eighteen issues every year.43
Whereas PPS explicitly catered to an international audience, Kommunist targeted a domestic Soviet audience. Published only in Russian, most, though not all, issues of Kommunist
in the late 1960s contained one or two articles on international topics in the section entitled “On international topics.” Kommunist generally devoted far more space to the discussion of art, literature, and culture than PPS. Issues of Kommunist were slightly longer on average than PPS
as well, with each issue typically running just under 130 pages, compared to PPS’s usual 90 to
100 pages. Published in Moscow, Kommunist tended to reveal ideological tensions within the Central Committee, but only at times when those tensions were exceptionally high, such as
42 Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1973), 216, 297.
43Aleksei Yurchak, "The Canon and the Mushroom: Lenin, Sacredness, and Soviet collapse," HAU: Journal of
19
during the 1920s before Joseph Stalin consolidated power and again in the late 1980s during the upheaval of perestroika and glasnost.44 In the late 1960s, the journal reliably adhered to the party line.
These differences aside, the two journals shared a similar purpose of discussing the theory and practice of building socialism. They shared a similar reliance on what Mikhail
Epstein called “ideolanguage.” Ideolanguage involves the use of terms, “ideologemes,” which ae descriptive and evaluative. Ideolanguage allows for deep meaning to be communicated in few words and, by connecting a concrete thing to an abstract ideological “truth,” ideolanguage “frees the speaker from the necessity of logical proof.”45Kommunist also had a similar structure to PPS, with a foreword (peredovaia) introducing a main theme, followed by several thematic sections. Both journals published issues commemorating anniversaries of major events in Soviet and communist history, such as the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967, or the birthdays of prominent thinkers such as V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. In addition to their similar purposes and structures, Kommunist and PPS, along with the CPSU’s primary news organ Pravda, shared a number of notable staff members over the years. Aleksei Matveevich Rumiantsev served as editor-in-chief (glavnii redaktor) of Kommunist before becoming the first chief editor (shef-redaktor) of PPS in 1958, and then finally served as editor-in-chief of Pravda in 1964 to 1965.46 Both of his successors at PPS, Iurii Pavlovich Frantsov
44 For the 1920s, see Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, 288; for the 1980s, see Yurchak, "The Canon
and the Mushroom,” 165-98.
45Mikhail N. Epstein, After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture, trans.
with an introduction by Anesa Miller-Pogacar (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 104, 107-8, 117-18; see also Donald J. Raleigh, “Languages of Power: How the Saratov Bolsheviks Imagined Their Enemies,” Slavic Review 57, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 338.
46 Georgii Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie (1953–1985 gg.) Svidetel’stvo sovremennika (Moscow:
20
(chief editor from 1964-1968) and Konstantin Ivanovich Zarodov (chief editor from 1968-1982), both served as deputy editors-in-chief at Pravda prior to their service at PPS. 47
The Mezhdunarodniki
Georgii Arkad’evich Arbatov, a Soviet political scientist and advisor to all general secretaries of the CPSU from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, who worked at PPS in the early 1960s, wrote in his 1991 memoir that he believed the journal itself had a positive, if modest, effect on the international communist movement. He argued that in offering a slightly different
perspective on world affairs than any other journal available in the Soviet Union by publishing articles written by non-Soviet communists, PPS “helped grow theoretical and political
knowledge, especially in weaker parties … and (albeit not always consistently) accustomed communists to ideological tolerance.”48 Arbatov indicates that while he worked in Prague, the
journal’s staff members did not try to develop “new theoretical concepts or political ideas,” although they published “many interesting articles where one could find both” creative concepts and ideas.49 He felt that the volatile political environment of the late 1950s and early 1960s following the Twentieth Party Congress, the Sino-Soviet Split, and growing tensions with the West, prevented the journal from doing much more than that.
Arbatov identified the journal’s role in the political development of a collective of relatively young Soviet thinkers that went on to influential positions in the Soviet government and party apparatus during the Gorbachev era as its greatest impact. Arbatov, in his 1991 memoir, described the journal’s offices as an “oasis of free thought” in which he and his
47 Spaulding, “New Head,” 57.
48 Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie, 75.
21
colleagues came into contact with foreign communists and their ideas. Through discussing and editing foreign communists’ articles, the editors began to understand foreign communists’ problems on their own terms, and generally learned that CPSU “did not have a monopoly on the truth; that there were other points of view … that could not be ignored.”50 The lessons they learned in Prague stayed with Arbatov and his colleagues that also went on to become close advisors to Gorbachev. Those ideas informed the “New Thinking” (novoe myshlenie) in foreign policy, perestoika, and glasnost, and also gained this cohort the moniker “mezhdunarodniki.” In
this way, Arbatov penned, PPS and its editors became “a sort of intellectual bridge between the 20th Party Congress and perestroika.”51
Arbatov attributed the open environment at PPS in no small part to the personality and views of its first editor-in-chief, Aleksei Rumiantsev. Born in 1905 and a full member of the CC CPSU by the time the journal began publication in 1958, Rumiantsev was reportedly one of the few from the older generation to embrace the ideas of the Twentieth Party Congress. Arbatov described how Rumiantsev actively sought out and recruited “talented, creative people” to work on his editorial staff and encouraged an open and collegial environment.52 Rumiantsev also was not afraid to use his high standing in the Party to defend his writers from more conservative Soviet officials on the editorial staff and in the ID. According to Arbatov, Rumiantsev openly clashed with a far more hardline CC member over his handling of the journal on at least one
50 Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie, 79.
51 Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie, 76.
22
occasion in the early sixties, attracting Moscow’s attention, but he retained his position while the conservative figure was removed after being severely criticized at a party reelection meeting.53
Most of Rumiantsev’s supporters at PPS were also deeply affected by the experience of 1956. Anatolii Cherniaev was one of the promising young thinkers Rumiantsev recruited in the late 1950s. Prior to joining the editorial staff, Cherniaev worked in the Central Committee’s Department of Science and Education, which he described in his 1995 memoir as the “most unpleasant, lost time of [his] life” due to personal conflicts and the general drudgery of
bureaucratic work. Cherniaev saw Prague as his “salvation” and the place where he developed his political views.54 In contrast to the rigid structure of work in the CC, Cherniaev found himself in “an environment that favored both freedom of thought and freedom of behavior. There,
without caution or pressure, one could comprehend their political situation and … maybe, find ‘convictions.’”55 After the experience of 1956, finding convictions was surely a rejuvenating
experience.
Cherniaev boldly claimed in that same memoir that among the Soviet editors, at least those who supported Rumiantsev, “none of us believed in communism. It would have been simply ridiculous in our circle … a sign of either cowardly deceit or mental deficiency.” He wrote further that none of them had believed in N. S. Khrushchev’s promise to build communism by 1980.56 Considering that elsewhere in his memoirs he says that he became passionate about
53 Arbatov, Zatianuvsheesia vyzdorovlenie, 78. Perhaps not incidentally, Rumiantsev was fired from his post at
Pravda after only a year. Vladimir Lukin attributed this to Rumiantsev publishing articles from more liberal authors in Pravda, which his superiors in the Kremlin evidently did not tolerate as well when it happened at their main news organ. See Pazderka, “Rok 1968 nás změnil,” 164.
54 Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 224.
55 Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 225.
23
Marxist-Leninist philosophy during the Thaw, Cherniaev likely meant that they did not believe in Stalinism and communism as it existed then, or that he already perceived the Thaw as being over. These men also all had direct experience working in the Party bureaucracy, where they saw Marxism-Leninism used as “a set of compulsory rules” rather than a subject worthy of serious thought.57 None of them had enjoyed that experience.
Their frustration with the Soviet system both opened them up to foreign ideas and led to an interesting dynamic between these “children of the 20th Party Congress” and the editors from foreign countries, particularly in the West, most of whom “idolized” the USSR and saw it as a “shrine” for communism.58 The Soviet editors had a hard time convincing their foreign
counterparts of the necessity of Khrushchev’s reforms. Cherniaev related how the editors would gather regularly to watch Thaw-era Soviet films that portrayed Soviet life in a more realistic fashion than had been possible under Stalin. For the Soviets, the bleak picture presented was “a return to the natural, wistful Russian truth of life … But in our friends, such films provoked active rejection, even outrage.” He remembered Italian and Spanish communists bombarding him with indignant questions: “What will our peasants say after watching such a film? And what will our rank-and-file communists who work among our peasants say?”59
Most of the Soviet editors had not been outside of the Soviet Union before and they all fell in love with Prague. They enjoyed a higher standard of living in Prague than in their home country, including higher salaries paid in hard currency and access to all kinds of material goods not easily available in the Soviet Union.60 Cherniaev and Georgii Khosroevich Shakhnazarov –
57 Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 229.
58 Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 230.
59 Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 229-30.
24
whose tenure at PPS overlapped with Cherniaev’s and Arbatov’s, and who also became a close personal advisor to Gorbachev – both mention in their memoirs that some Soviets in Prague, including both diplomats and journalists, took to “hoarding” money for when they returned home or buying luxury goods to take home with them, but they insist that their circle did not engage in these activities. They instead favored cultural experiences: Shakhnazarov mentions going to exhibitions, films, performances at the local theatres, and orchestral performances at St. Vitus’ Cathedral during the opening days of the Prague Spring, while Cherniaev waxed poetic about being surrounded by Czechs on Prague trams.61 Cherniaev seemed to be particularly besotted
with life in Prague. The higher standard of living, he said, “liberated [us] from the forced asceticism and troubles of Soviet life,” while immersion in Czechoslovak culture and life made them “more civilized.”62 This great affection for Prague, no matter how idealized in Cherniaev’s
later life, certainly contributed to the outrage many of the editors felt after the invasion in 1968. The editors enjoyed crucial access to information through contacts with foreign
communists and through access to an “excellent” library, which Shakhnazarov hinted contained material forbidden in the Soviet Union, including foreign periodicals.63 Petr Pithart, the prime minister of the Czech Republic from 1990 to 1992 who often socialized with PPS staff members, recalled that they held viewing parties for Western films in addition to Thaw-era Soviet films.64
61 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami, 94-95; Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 235.
62 Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 234; The Soviet editors joined an interesting tradition of Russian intellectuals finding
solace in Prague after disillusionment in their homeland: see Catherine Andreyev and Ivan Savický, Russia Abroad: Prague and the Russian Diaspora, 1918-1938 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), ix-xi.
63 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami, 94.
64 He specifically mentioned Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s films as being popular among the PPS staff. Petr
25
The editors’ contacts with foreign communists proved enormously influential, especially those from Western countries. Editors apparently had a lot of free time, thanks to more efficient communication systems than in the Soviet Union, and they spent much of that time talking with their foreign colleagues. They all lived in close proximity to each other, so their conversations spilled out of the editorial office as well.65 The foreign communists, for their part, took full advantage of their access to open-minded Soviet party members. Shakhnazarov described Rumiantsev’s briefcase as “littered” (bukval’no zavalen) with documents written by French, Spanish, and Latin American communists.66
After Rumiantsev moved back to Moscow and to Pravda in 1964, Iu. P. Frantsov took over as chief editor. Like Rumiantsev, Frantsov was an academic and had worked in other Soviet press organs, namely as a senior editor at Pravda. Georgii Arbatov and Karen Brutents both studied with Frantsov as doctoral students at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) in the 1950s and maintained close relationships with him for years after. Brutents recalled in his 1998 memoir that Frantsov had some unusual views on Soviet history for his time, specifically in stressing its relative “backwardness” when the usual party line
emphasized how “advanced” and “progressive” the country was. He credited conversations with Frantsov for contributing far more to his intellectual development than formal classes at
MGIMO.67 Though Frantsov evidently shared at least some of Rumiantsev’s feelings on freedom
of thought, Georgii Shakhnazarov suggested that Frantsov was not as capable of maintaining that kind of open environment against pressure from more conservative apparatchiks.68 Brutents
65 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami, 94; Cherniaev, Moia zhizn’, 228.
66 Shakhnzarov, S vozhdiami, 85.
67 Karen Brutents, Tridtsat’ let, 102-3.
26
attributed Frantsov’s “extremely cautious, even timid” behavior to his experience in the Leningrad Affair, in which Frantsov saw many of his former colleagues purged as Moscow sought to destroy the increasingly powerful network of Leningrad-based party officials that had formed during and after the war. Frantsov, a Leningrad native, had been head of the sciences section of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee during World War II, though he obviously survived the purges. Brutents contended that this brush with the violent side of Stalinist politics made Frantsov “despite the occasional bouts of intransigence, quite obedient” to the CPSU.69
The replacement of N. S. Khrushchev as General Secretary of the CPSU with L. I. Brezhnev in 1964 led to a gradual, but clear change in the Soviet government’s attitude toward reform and unorthodox thinking. The editors of PPS were undoubtedly aware of the changes underway in Moscow and were likely more careful with what they published under the more cautious Frantsov. But in 1968, the choice to headquarter PPS in Prague backfired on Moscow, as the journal’s editors were suddenly in the middle of a reform movement that pushed the boundaries of acceptable thinking and practice in the Soviet bloc.
69 Brutents, Tridtsat’ let, 102; for more on the Leningrad Affair, see Benjamin Tromly, “The Leningrad Affair and
27 CHAPTER 3
REFORM AND INVASION, JANUARY-SEPTEMBER 1968
At its January Plenum in 1968, the KSČ officially replaced Antonín Novotný, who had been Czechoslovakia’s leader since 1953, with Alexander Dubček. Novotný had presided over a highly centralized and repressive neo-Stalinist regime, and his removal seemed to be the
culmination of a delayed de-Stalinization process in Czechoslovakia. 70 Although the CPSU had not officially approved Dubček prior to his installment as First Secretary, it initially considered him trustworthy as he had been a dedicated communist for years and had even grown up in the Soviet Union. The communist leadership in the Soviet Union and throughout the Warsaw Pact quickly became more and more alarmed as Dubček and his supporters in the KSČ soon
embarked on a series of reforms now known collectively as the Prague Spring. I do not seek to explore the intellectual origins of the Prague Spring reforms, as others have done so extensively, but it is worth emphasizing that the reforms aimed to improve socialism by democratizing and “humanizing” the system, hence the term “socialism with a human face.” Describing them as “liberalizing” or as part of a Western political tradition is misleading.71 However honest the
reformers’ intentions might have been, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact states proved
70 McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 92.
71 McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 121-123; Williams, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath, 3, 10-13; H.
28
unwilling to tolerate any changes to the basic ideas underlaying the socialist system anywhere in the bloc.
Some figures in the Kremlin agitated for direct military intervention early on, but Leonid Brezhnev initially preferred a diplomatic approach. The Warsaw Pact therefore began
preparations for intervention alongside more “comradely” methods of pressuring Dubček to rein in the reforms. Warsaw Pact leaders shocked Dubček with their harsh questioning at a March summit in Dresden. Brezhnev continued the direct personal appeals at a bilateral meeting in Moscow in May. Dubček repeatedly assured his fellow leaders that he had the situation under control, but the reform movement showed no signs of slowing down. Warsaw Pact military maneuvers on Czechoslovak soil in June and July were an unambiguous warning. From July 14-15, Warsaw Pact leaders met without Dubček, who had avoided the invitation to attend, and issued a letter expressing their concern and laying out their demands. The Czechoslovak response was practically defiant, sharply reminding their allies of the principle of mutual noninterference. By mid-August, the situation had reached an impasse, and the Warsaw Pact took the drastic action of invading an allied country to bring it back into line. 72
The Reforms as seen in PPS
Neither PPS nor Kommunist published articles discussing Dubček’s elevation to First Secretary or the January Plenum, perhaps because Dubček’s intentions and the situation after the January Plenum in general remained unclear. But starting in April and continuing through June,
PPS ran a series of articles by Czechoslovak reformers that presented the reforms in the reformers’ own terms.
72 For this summary, I primarily draw upon McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 140-43; Williams, The Prague
29
The first PPS article to address the reforms underway in Czechoslovakia appeared in the April issue, and it was a bold article to start with. The author, a Czechoslovak economist named Otokar Turek, described how Czechoslovak economists freely consider the work of Westerners such as Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian-British economist known for his adherence to classical liberalism, alongside the work of Lenin and Soviet economists. Turek quotes several other economists throughout the article to inform his argument. He seemingly rejected the notion of central planning: “It is now generally agreed that planning by administrative directive does not accord with the present stage of intensive development and tends to aggravate rather than solve economic problems.” Rather than simply dictating every aspect of the diverse economy, the plan should serve as “a means of harmonizing interests.” Though Turek insisted that Czechoslovakia was not abandoning socialism and economic planning altogether, its economists felt it necessary to incorporate market mechanisms to help establish a “rational price structure,” which would provide better signals about economic health.73 With better signals, the state could ensure higher
efficiency of production and better serve socialist society. Turek’s bold pronouncements about incorporating Western economic theory and market mechanisms into the Czechoslovak economy surely alarmed the other socialist states, even with his assurances that they would not abandon planning. From here, articles on the reforms only got bolder.
In May, PPS published a summary of the Action Program of the KSČ adopted at the April Plenum. The author was identified only by the initials L.A. The article explained that in the 1960s, Czechoslovak society had developed beyond class antagonism and contradictions, but, under Antonin Novotny’s leadership, the KSČ had failed to adapt to these new conditions. This failure to adapt had resulted in “serious shortcomings and deformations,” “distortions” in party
73 Otakar Turek, “Czechoslovak Economists on Planning and the Market Mechanism Under Socialism,” PPS 11, no.
30
policy, and a “discrepancy between words and deeds.” While socialism had seen great successes, reforms were necessary to correct these deformations and allow socialist society in
Czechoslovakia to reach its true potential. Throughout, the author carefully stressed that all reforms were creative, democratic implementations of Marxist-Leninist theory, and reaffirmed the Czechoslovak CP’s and government’s commitment to friendship with the Soviet Union and the other socialist states. Decentralization and democratization were at the heart of the reforms: rather than dominating the people, the author explained, the CP’s role was to inspire, organize, and manage the building of socialism in Czechoslovakia. The CP could not simply “decree its authority,” but had to “steadily win it by its deeds.” Following this line of thought, Novotny’s leadership had failed to properly serve the people because “bureaucratic forces” had over-centralized power in the hands of the CP, and specifically in its leader.74
In the next issue, PPS published an interview with Alexander Dubček in which he
reiterated many of the points made in the previous article concerning the conditions necessitating the reforms and their main goals. Dubček, however, spent more time reaffirming the KSČ’s commitment to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. He soundly rejected any notion of Czechoslovakia as a “bridge between East and West” as it stood firmly in the socialist camp. Dubček further reassured his socialist brethren that Czechoslovakia was not “imposing [its] method on anyone as a model,” as they considered it to be their “internal affair.” Concerning the economic reforms, Dubček stated that the old system had resulted in “an insufficiently
flexible and, considering Czechoslovakia’s potential, ineffective economy.” Though the CC of the KSČ fully supported the actions of the CMEA and believed that economic cooperation with the Soviet Union and other socialist states was “vital,” it would not reject offers of cooperation
31
with nonsocialist countries.75 The last point regarding economic reforms had already drawn a
direct rebuke from the Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin at a meeting between the leaders of the Warsaw Pact in Dresden on March 23.76 The leaders of the other Warsaw Pact countries had openly challenged Dubček over his handling of the situation multiple times by this point, so giving an interview such as this was a highly questionable decision on Dubček’s part. It was moments like this, where Dubček’s actions conflicted with his assurances to the other Warsaw Pact leaders, that convinced the Soviet leadership of the need for intervention.77
Despite the presence of these articles portraying the reforms in a positive light, PPS was not simply a mouthpiece for the Dubček regime. Several other articles from the first half of 1968 were anything but reformist. Even articles concerning reforms in other socialist countries took care to downplay the extent of reforms. Todor Pavlov of the Bulgarian Communist Party in the April issue explained that while the development of socialist societies would take place within their own national contexts, they all still followed “the general laws and trends” of Marxism-Leninism that had shaped the 1917 Revolution. Pavlov took a positively militant stance to spreading socialism, arguing for an open counteroffensive against imperialist subversion.78 An article from June by Soviet economist Aleksander Birman describing the economic reforms in the Soviet Union initiated in 1965 took great pains to demonstrate that the reforms were in no way a “departure” from basic Marxist-Leninist principles, and certainly did not constitute the
75 “Czechoslovakia: Vital Problems of the Communist Party (Interview with Alexander Dubček),” PPS 11, no. 6
(June 1968): 12-16.
76 Williams, Prague Spring, 70.
77 Williams, Prague Spring, 36-37.
32
introduction of any kind of free market.79 In the same issue, French Communist Georges Cogniot
warned against a Western imperialist effort “to undermine the unity of the Socialist countries” and urged a new commitment to internationalism under the direction of the CPSU and strict adherence to Marxism-Leninism.80 Taken in the context of these articles and many others like them, the articles by Czechoslovak reformists appear as entries in a genuine conversation about how to develop socialism taking place in the pages of PPS.
Kommunist Takes Notice
Whereas PPS began running articles on the developing situation in Czechoslovakia in April, Kommunist did not print anything explicitly dealing with the events in the country until its ninth issue of the year, released in July. The journal’s silence on the matter is odd, considering that the Central Committee was becoming increasingly alarmed at the unfolding situation in Czechoslovakia. It is perhaps best explained by the journal’s usual focus on domestic matters and the fact that the Soviet leadership’s dealings with the Czechoslovaks were still mostly taking place behind closed doors. Given the still uncertain situation, Kommunist’s editors may well
have preferred simply not to mention what was going on. Articles in the section “On
international topics” were far more concerned with the battle against imperialism in Vietnam and Latin America or with criticizing the Chinese government during the first half of 1968. In fact, as late as June, the articles in Kommunist expressed nothing but optimism about the unified state of the international communist movement: an article summarizing the results of the Budapest
79 Alexander Birman, “Reform: Emulation or Competition?” PPS 11, no. 6 (June 1968): 25.
80 Georges Cogniot, “Internationalism and the National Tasks of the Communist Parties,” PPS 11, no. 6 (June 1968):
33
Consultative Meeting of the Warsaw Pact proclaimed that “the desire for unity is the leading tendency in the communist movement.”81
That optimistic tone began to change after the meeting of the Warsaw Five (the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria) in Warsaw from July 14-15. Although the other socialist states had pressured the Czechoslovak leadership to rein in the reforms since March, the Warsaw Meeting proved to be especially significant in eroding Soviet trust in Dubček since avoided attending the meeting.82Kommunist published a statement from the Central Committee expressing wholehearted support for the results of the Warsaw meeting, followed by the text of the “Warsaw Letter” from the Warsaw Pact Five to the Czechoslovak leadership. The statement and letter contained many of the themes that would become standard for articles discussing the situation in Czechoslovakia over the next year and a half, such as an insistence upon full dedication to Marxist-Leninist principles and proletarian internationalism. The letter was effectively an ultimatum to the Czechoslovak leadership to get the situation under control and to return to the proper socialist path, or risk “imperil(ing) the interests of the entire socialist system.” The letter further assured Czechoslovakia that it could “count on the solidarity and comprehensive assistance of the fraternal socialist countries” in this task, not-so-subtly threatening outside intervention if the Dubček regime did not get the situation under control. 83
Even as preparations for the invasion were well under way, the Soviet side tried to find a diplomatic solution with the Czechoslovaks at a bilateral meeting in the Slovak border town of Čierna nad Tisouheld from July 29 to August 1 and at a meeting with other East European
81 “Peredovaia – Neodolimaia tendentsiia k edinstvu,” Kommunist, no. 9 (June 1968): 7.
82 McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 142-43.
83 “Ob itogakh vstrechi v Varshave delegatsii Kommunisticheskikh i rabochikh partii sotsialisticheskikh stran,”
34
leaders at Bratislavaon August 3. Kevin McDermott described these meetings as “extremely tense,” as Dubček utterly failed to convince the other socialist leaders that he would carry out their demands and return Czechoslovakia to the correct socialist path.84Kommunist published the statements from these meetings in its August issue.85 These documents, like the statement from the Warsaw Meeting, attempted to downplay the severity of the events while at the same time implicitly condemning the Prague Spring reforms. The statements take care to describe “an atmosphere of complete frankness, sincerity and mutual understanding” in which the “extensive comradely exchange of views” took place.86 The statement from the Bratislava meeting framed it
as a response to a general, if urgent, imperialist effort to “drive a wedge” between socialist states, but much of the statement was aimed directly at the KSČ. The statement speaks of needing to maintain unity, cohesion, and “fraternal friendship” along with “unswerving loyalty to Marxism-Leninism” in order to counter the imperialist threat. Ironically, considering the invasion that would take place only a few weeks after the Bratislava meeting, the statement also insists that the parties would “deepen all-round cooperation … on the principles of equality, respect for
sovereignty and national independence, territorial integrity, fraternal mutual assistance and solidarity.”87
84 McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 143.
85 “Zaiavlenie Kommunisticheskikh i rabochikh partii sotsialisticheskikh stran,” Kommunist, no. 12 (August 1968):
15-19; “Ob itogakh peregovorov Politbiuro TsK KPSS i Prezidiuma TsK KPCh v gor. Chierne-nad-Tissoi i Bratislavskogo Soveshchaniia predstavitelei Kommunisticheskikh i rabochikh partii sotsialisticheskikh stran,” Kommunist, no. 12 (August 1968): 20.
86 “Joint Communiqué on Meeting of the Political Bureau of the CC CPSU and the Presidium of the CC CPC
(Cierna nad Tisou, July 29-August 1, 1968),” PPS 11, no. 9 (September 1968): 3.
87 “Statement of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the Socialist Countries (Bratislava, August 3, 1968),”
35
Unlike the statement from the Warsaw Meeting in the July issue, the documents from Čierna nad Tisou and Bratislava did not occupy the first pages of the August issue: preparations for the celebrations surrounding Lenin’s 100th birthday took precedence. Celebrations of major
communist figures typically took center stage in issues of Kommunist, so this was not at all out of the ordinary, but that may have been the point. Following these documents was an article entitled “Proletarian Internationalism – the Banner of the International Communist Movement,” which reiterated the main points of the Bratislava Declaration. In contrast to earlier articles talking about the need for unity and cohesion within the movement, which typically treated that need as a constant, this article specifically claimed that “the unity and cohesion of the
international communist movement on the basis of the great principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism is becoming important.”88 It also hinted at the emerging narrative that the unraveling situation in Czechoslovakia was the result of imperialist subterfuge by
reassuring readers that the USSR and allies were “doing all that is necessary” to defend socialism against imperialist sabotage.89 This publication is the first of a particular type of article that both journals would continue to publish for the next year stressing the need to defend the unity of the international communist movement. In August 1968, authors in Kommunist were already searching for the best spin to put on the situation. PPS would join this effort only after the invasion and a change in leadership.
The Warsaw Pact Five Invade
PPS published the same documents from the Čierna nad Tisou and Bratislava meetings as part of a collection in the September issue after the invasion had already occurred. The timing
88 “Peredovaia – Proletarskii internatsionalizm – znamia mezhdunarodnogo kommunisticheskogo dvizheniia,”
Kommunist, no. 12 (August 1968): 24.
